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Had a greater distance separated Maurice from his pursuers the master of the Boadicea would have endeavoured to have sunk the four canoes with the ship's guns; but the risk was too great to attempt it as they were. However, the gunner and carpenter were sent into the fore-top to try and pick off some of the natives by firing over Maurice's canoe.
Fore-Top. Ha! ha! ha! ha! hem! clear my throat! I've been thinking over it ever since, and that ha, ha's the final consequence. Why so? Because a laugh's the wisest, easiest answer to all that's queer; and come what will, one comfort's always left that unfailing comfort is, it's all predestinated.
I let none escape: I had them all in their turns, and glutted my thirst for revenge. I had been three weeks on board, when the ship was reported ready for sea. I had acquired the favour of the first lieutenant by a constant attention to the little duties he gave me to perform. I had been put into a watch, and stationed in the fore-top, and quartered at the foremast guns on the main deck.
And so fur as I am concerned I'd ruther attract attention by doin' sunthin' worth while, sunthin' really noble and good, than by tyin' a red rag round my fore-top. But as I say, folks are different, and I am fur from sayin' that my way is the only right way."
Arthur's place was in the mizzen, Jim's in the main, and Jack's in the fore-top. The stunsails were first got in, then the royals and topgallant-sails. The men were working well, but the captain's voice came up loud from the quarter-deck, "Work steady, lads, but work all you can! Every minute is of consequence!" Jack looked round the horizon, but could see nothing to account for this urgency.
What wuz she a-thinkin' on as she done up that fore-top or braided that back hair? Did any hand ever lay on that soft, shinin' hair in caresses? I presoom more than like as not there had. Her mother's, anyway, and mebby a lover's, sence the fashion of love is older than the pyramids enough sight old as Adam, and before that Love wuz. For Love thought out the World.
And I well remember that after huntin' high and low for 'em and all over the house with tremblin' knees and shaky hands cold as a frog's, I found 'em on my own fore-top, and I sot right down in my tracts and read.
“Well, there is nothing like flying high, young ’un; but there is no reason why in time you should not get to be captain of the fore-top or coxswain of the captain’s gig. I suppose either of these would content you?” “I suppose it ought,” Will said with a merry laugh. “At any rate it will be time to think of higher posts when I have gained one of these.” The voyage to Portsmouth was uneventful.
Ten were at that time, alive on the fore-top, but three were so exhausted, and so helpless, that they were washed away before any relief arrived; three others perished, and thus only four were, at last, left alive on the fore-top. The place where the ship went down was barely three times her length to the southward of the entrance into Herring Cove.
Two or three of the English passed me, without saying anything. Even at this instant, a volley of bullets came out of the brig's fore-top, and struck all around me; some hitting the deck, and others the gun itself. Just then, an English officer came up, and said "What are you doing here, you Yankee?" I felt exceedingly savage, and answered, "Looking at your fools firing upon their own men."
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